Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution wrote an essay about the 50th anniversary edition of James Burnham‘s 1964 book, Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism. Berkowitz joins Steve Moore of the Heritage Foundation to talk about it on The John Batchelor Show.

Here is a Mormon model of the pre-existence. Christ presented a plan for us to experience mortality and Satan presented an alternate plan. Christ’s plan allowed full scope for our free agency, so we’d sin, which He would repair by atoning for the sin. Satan’s plan restrained our free agency through repression and tyranny and disinformation/propaganda and who knows, so that we wouldn’t sin. We voted to accept Christ, but Satan and his followers wouldn’t accept the vote, like king-men. Consistent with their plan, like king-men they then went to war to get by force what they had lost by vote. They lost this confrontation too and were thrown out. But the war continues. It has become a bandit resistance campaign of subversion and sabotage.

Twenty years ago Wednesday, members of Hungary’s budding opposition organized a picnic at the border with Austria to press for greater political freedom and promote friendship with their Western neighbors. (more…)